Desktop app does not show older local CLI/TUI sessions; pinned chats still open, but unpinned CLI sessions never appear in app

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

Not confirmed from the About dialog at filing time. The issue was investigated on macOS on April 20, 2026. Session metadata on disk includes recent Codex CLI/TUI versions such as 0.120.0.

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT individual account (subscription tier not independently re-verified during filing).

What platform is your computer?

macOS (Apple Silicon / arm64)

What issue are you seeing?

Older local Codex CLI/TUI sessions exist on disk and are still visible/accessible from the CLI, but the Codex desktop app does not show them in its history/sidebar.

Important distinction:

• older pinned chats are still accessible in the desktop app;
• missing chats are primarily older CLI/TUI local sessions;
• rebuilding local desktop caches/indexes did not make those sessions appear.

This makes it look less like a generic cache corruption issue and more like a desktop import/indexing gap between:

• local session files under ~/.codex/sessions/...
• and the desktop app’s own conversation/task stores under ~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.chat/...

What steps can reproduce the bug?

I do not have a clean minimal repro, but the observed state is:

1. Use Codex CLI/TUI over time so local sessions accumulate under ~/.codex/sessions/YYYY/MM/DD/...jsonl.
2. Open Codex desktop on the same machine/account.
3. Observe that some older local sessions are visible in CLI/TUI, but do not appear in the desktop app history/sidebar.
4. Observe that pinned older chats can still be opened in the desktop app.

What is the expected behavior?

If older local CLI/TUI sessions exist and are associated with the same local Codex state/account, the desktop app should either:

• display them in history; or
• provide a clear explanation that those local sessions are not imported/supported in desktop history.

Pinned chats and unpinned local sessions should not appear to come from different invisible stores without explanation.

Actual behavior

• CLI/TUI session files are present on disk under ~/.codex/sessions/....
• The CLI can still access those sessions.
• The desktop app does not show many of them.
• Pinned old chats remain accessible in the desktop app.
• Rebuilding/removing likely desktop-derived caches and indexes did not change the result.

Additional information

What I verified locally:

1. The missing session IDs exist under ~/.codex/sessions/....
2. During earlier investigation, some of those local sessions had session_meta.cwd values like /, which seemed suspicious and correlated with desktop logs like:

• No cwd found for local task conversationId=...

1. However, even after fixing that local metadata and rebuilding local index/task-store caches, the desktop app still did not show the missing sessions.
2. The more important finding is that the missing CLI/TUI session IDs were not found in the desktop app’s own Chat store under:

• ~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.chat/conversations-v3-<workspace-id>/...

1. Pinned chats were still accessible, which suggests the desktop app still has some conversations, but not these older local CLI/TUI sessions.

Desktop-side stores inspected during investigation:

• ~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.chat/codex-taskItems-v2-default-*
• ~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.chat/codex-taskItems-v2-archived-*
• ~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.chat/codex-environments-*
• ~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.chat/conversations-v3-*

Actions already tried without fixing the issue:

• full app restart;
• rebuilding ~/.codex/session_index.jsonl;
• clearing/rebuilding desktop task-item/environment stores under com.openai.chat;
• checking com.openai.chat preferences/state;
• verifying that pinned chats are still available.

Related but not identical symptom:

• #17354

This report is narrower: pinned chats still work, while older local CLI/TUI sessions appear not to be imported into the desktop app’s own conversation store at all.

If useful, I can provide sanitized examples of:

• CLI/TUI session IDs present in ~/.codex/sessions/...
• corresponding desktop logs showing No cwd found for local task ...
• and the absence of those IDs from com.openai.chat app-side stores.